The Hidden Risks of Open-Source & AI-generated Code
In today’s rapidly-evolving development environments, while open source and AI-generated code have accelerated software innovation, they have also introduced hidden risks and vulnerabilities in your workflows, like:
1. License Contamination: AI assistants trained on public repositories may reproduce snippets from GPL, AGPL, or SSPL-licensed sources without context or licence awareness, imposing obligations on your proprietary code.
2. Copyright & IP Infringement: Some AI models may suggest fragments or segments from their training data. Without snippet-level scanning, these can enter your production unnoticed, leading to potential copyright infringement.
3. Security Blind Spots: Open-source code sometimes inherit known vulnerabilities (CVEs) or insecure patterns that can bypass SCA detection and they create unmonitored risk inside your codebase.
4. Lack of Traceability: Traditional dependency manifests can’t track snippets or offer proper visibility, making it impossible to answer questions like: “Where did this function originate?”, “Is it covered by an open-source licence?” and “Is it safe to ship?”
Why Snippet-Level Detection Matters
Traditionally, Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools focus on detecting full components or declared dependencies, relying on package manifests and metadata. This means they often miss the most common modern risks like
- Developers copying or adapting small fragments of open-source code
- that reproduces copyrighted open-source snippets without attribution